Only the eternally naive would say ‘coincidence.’ But Everton’s desire to gloss over the figures is understandable.

Annual losses grew from £5m to £9m and the club’s debt increased from £44.9m to £46m.

The debt figure marks a continuing downward spiral which can only be checked if the 24/7 search for investment finally bears fruit – while the world is still officially in recession – or next year’s much awaited additional TV income doesn’t end up in the pockets of players.

But is there light on the horizon?

Can Evertonians dare to dream?

Fortunes can change very quickly in Premier League football. And you don’t have to be a Blackburn, Leeds – or Manchester City fan – to understand that.

“Louis Saha, Phil Neville, Tim Cahill and Sylvain Distin are all nearing the end of their useful top flight playing life.”

“Maybe it's symbolic that this year is the centenary of the Titanic sinking. They have been steaming towards their own iceberg for years.”

And “An ageing stadium, an ageing and as a result increasingly injury prone squad, a decreasing fan base – with those that remain becoming more and more disenchanted – and an over-reliance on a magnificent manager. I fear for the long term future of Everton Football Club.”

It was an unrelentingly gloomy outlook.

Everton were 11th in the Premier League table, with a negative goal difference.

Now they are fifth and poised for a realistic assault on Champions League qualification, an outcome which could genuinely transform the club.

I repeat those lines not to highlight what a hopeless tipster I am, but to show how quickly fortunes can change in football.

But sometimes it seems that outlooks don’t change as quickly as fortunes.

Some of that “disenchantment” referred to seems embedded at Goodison.

Story continues on next page >>>

Blues fans mock their Reds counterparts for having unrealistic aspirations, for believing that every handsome home win is about to herald a title charge – and every new signing is the final piece of an elaborate jigsaw.

There’s even a mock Twitter account dedicated to it (@LiverpoolLogic if you want a smile).

But inappropriate or not, at Anfield optimism springs eternal.

Across the park it’s different.

Everton are playing their best football since, at a conservative estimate, the spring of 1996.

But if that Tony Grant-Andrei Kanchelskis inspired cameo was short-lived, they are also playing their best football, consistently, since Howard Kendall was manager.

And that new attacking emphasis has yielded more points in a calendar year than at any time since Everton were last champions.

Yet there’s a chunk of their fanbase who still fear the worst.

It’s difficult to gauge the ratio of satisfied fan to disgruntled punter. People with an axe to grind always make their voices heard louder than the satisfied majority. And the reaction on internet forums, Twitter and message boards to yesterday’s accounts was almost wholly negative – doom, gloom and despondency just hours after Everton had forced even Alan Pardew to admit “Everton had a bit more guile, a bit more experience and a bit more quality.”

That’s the manager of a Newcastle team who were lauded last season for selling one player for £35m, investing the money wisely in the playing staff and surging up the table to finish fifth.

Everton have been doing that for years.

And provided they keep hold of David Moyes could feasibly continue to do so.

In difficult, testing times, Everton are making the very best of a bad set of circumstances and shouldn’t that be something to be celebrated?

I’m not a business reporter. I won’t pretend to understand phrases like amortisation of contracts and netbook value of intangible assets.

But yesterday’s figures appear to point to a club still desperately trying to spin plates to push every penny possible into its playing staff until the club can finally be sold.

Everton have the eighth highest wage bill in the Premier League, yet have consistently achieved above that investment.

Their annual losses rose from £5m to £9m – because TV bosses elected to show four fewer Everton games last season – when gate receipts fell and season tickets dipped.

But that loss already looks like being offset.

By the time they face Manchester United next month Everton will already have matched last season's TV appearances, average gates have risen from 33,000 to 36,000, season ticket sales are up by 6.4 per cent and half-season ticket sales have risen by a remarkable 100 per cent. Reasons are clear.

Send a story

Advertising Department

Trinity Mirror Merseyside, the Echo's parent company, is one of the North West’s largest multimedia providers reaching more than 900,000 adults every month.

The Liverpool Echo, Trinity Mirror Merseyside’s flagship brand, is the area’s best-read newspaper including national newspapers.

The Liverpool Echo reaches 1 in 3 people in the area with a daily readership of more than 256,000* people.The Liverpool Echo website reaches 1.5 million unique users each month who look at around 8.5 million pages**.

The Editor

Alastair Machray

Alastair Machray was appointed editor of The Liverpool Echo in 2005 and is also editor-in-chief of Trinity Mirror Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. He is a former editor of The Daily Post (Wales and England) and editor-in-chief of the company's Welsh operations. Married dad-of-two and keen golfer Alastair is one of the longest-serving newspaper editors in the country. His titles have won numerous awards and spearheaded numerous successful campaigns.